Information security

Chapter -1

Mr.Rajasekhar Boddu
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 Objective
• Define the 3 goals of information security
• Identify security attacks
• Understand relationship b/n security services and goals
• Define security mechanisms to provide security services

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 Introduction
• We are living in information age
• Information is an asset like other assets.
• It need to be secured from attack
• Until few decades ago, information collected by organization
was stored on physical files and protected physically.
• With the advent of computers, storages become electronic in
networked and distributed system environment.

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 Cont’d…
• The U.S. Government’s National Information Assurance Glossary defines INFOSEC
as:
“Protection of information systems against unauthorized access to
or modification of information, whether in storage, processing or
transit, and against the denial of service to authorized users or the
provision of service to unauthorized users, including those measures
necessary to detect, document, and counter such threats.”

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 Cont’d…
• An Information System (IS) is much more than computer hardware;
it is the entire set of software, hardware, data, people, and
procedures necessary to use information as a resource in the
organization
• The computer can be either or both the subject of an attack and/or
the object of an attack
• When a computer is
– the subject of an attack, it is used as an active tool to conduct the
attack
– the object of an attack, it is the entity being attacked

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 Security Goals
Security addresses 3 widely accepted elements or
areas of focus/goals (referred to as the “CIA”):

• In military hiding
sensitive information , in Security goals

factory hiding some

crucial operation, … all
are called confidentiality Confidentiality Integrity Availability

• Confidentiality is both in
stored state and in transit
state. 6
 Confidentiality
• Confidentiality :This term covers two related concepts:

– Data confidentiality: Assures that private

information/resources(resource and
configuration hiding) are not made available or
disclosed to unauthorized individuals

• In networked environment, it means only sender and

receiver should know message contents
– Privacy: Assures that individuals control
what information may be collected and stored and by
whom and to whom that information may be disclosed
• Eg physician
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 Integrity
• Information need to be changed constantly.
– Eg. In bank, when customer deposits or withdraws, the balance has to
be changed.

• Integrity means that changes need to be done only by authorized entity

and through authorized mechanism.

• In network communication, integrity means the message need no be

altered with out sender’s and receiver’s knowledge

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 Availability
• The information created and stored by an organization need to be
available for authorized entities.

• Information is useless if it is not available .

– Eg. If bank customer unable to access their account for transactions.

• This goal of security known as Availability

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 Attacks
• Security Attack: any action that compromises the security of
information owned by an organization.

• The 3 goal of security can be threaten by two kinds of security attacks.

– Passive attacks: attempts to learn or make use of information from the

system but does not affect system resources.

– Active attacks: attempts to alter system resources or affect their operation.

• Security attacks can also be grouped into 3 based on security goals it

targets.

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 Cont’d…
Attacks Active/Passive Threatening
Snooping Passive Confidentiality
Traffic Analysis

Modification Active Integrity

Masquerading
Replaying
Repudiation

Denial of Service Active Availability

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 Passive Attacks
• Snooping refers to unauthorized
access to or interception of
information on transit.
• Traffic analysis refers to getting
information monitoring online
traffic.
– Eg. Sender and receiver email ID.
• The revealing of the information
may harm the sender and receiver
of the message. But, the system is
not affected.

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 Cont’d…
• The goal of the opponent is to obtain information that is being transmitted.

• Two types of passive attacks are the release of message contents(or

sniffing) and traffic analysis.

• Release of message contents: A telephone conversation, an electronic mail

message, and a transferred file may contain sensitive or confidential
information; we would like to prevent an opponent from learning the
contents.
• It is also called interception: An attack on confidentiality

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 Cont’d…
• Packet sniffer: a program that records a copy of every packet that
flies by including such sensitive information as passwords, trade
secrets, private personal messages, etc.
• Sniffed packets can then be analyzed offline for sensitive
information
• Packet sniffer software are freely available and some are
commercial; e.g., Wireshark is a (free) packet sniffer

• It is usually difficult to detect passive attacks because they do not

involve any alteration of the data

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 Cont’d…
• Traffic analysis: to determine
– The location and
– Identity of communicating hosts
– Frequency and length of messages being exchanged (even if the
message is encrypted).
• This information might be useful in guessing the nature of the
communication that was taking place

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 Cont’d…
• Snooping (eavesdropping) is a passive attack;
• It is unauthorized interception of information,
– e.g., passive wiretapping (not necessarily physical wiring)
• It is a form of disclosure

• Prevent the success of these attacks? By means of encryption.

• Thus , the emphasis in dealing with passive attacks is on prevention

rather than detection.
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 Active Attacks
• Involve some modification of
the data stream or the creation
of a false stream
– Transit data is fully controlled
by the intruder
– The attacker can modify, extend,
delete or play any data

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 Cont’d…
• It can be subdivided into four categories:
– Masquerade: also called fabrication: An attack on authenticity

– Replay: An attack on Integrity

– Delay: An attack on Availability
– Modification/Alteration of messages: An attack on Integrity
– Denial of service (also known as degrading of service or Interruption):
An attack on availability
– Repudiation: An attack on Integrity

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 Masquerade/spoofing
 Takes place when one entity pretend to
be the other
 It is also called impersonation.

 Eg. The attacker might steal visa card

and PIN of a bank customer and pretend
that he/she is that customer

 Can be prevented by passing process of

authentication giving few access to
authorized entity to impersonate

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 Cont’d…
 It is a form of both deception and usurpation(taking position or power
illegally)
 Note : delegation is a form of masquerading occurs when one entity
authorizes a 2nd entity to perform functions on his behalf , not violation of
security.
 Common types of spoofing are:
 IP spoofing : the attacker injects packet with false source address to the internet.
 DNS spoofing: changing the DNS information to let it to direct to the wrong
machine.
 url spoofing/webpage phishing: legitimate web pages such as bank’s site can be
reproduced in look and feel on another server controlled by attacker

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 Delay
• A temporary inhibition/suspension of a service
• Is a form of usurpation
• Happens when attacker force the delivery take more time
trough manipulation of system, network component or server
component.

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 Replaying
 Involves passive capture of data unit
and its subsequent retransmission
using path-1,2 and 3.
 The attacker obtain copy of message
sent by the user and tries to replay it.
 Eg if a person sent request to his bank
to ask for payment to the attacker, who
has done a job for him. The attacker
intercepts the message and send it
again to get another payment from the
bank.

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 Modification /Alteration
• An unauthorized change of information
• It includes 3 classes of threat:
– Deception : happens when receiver relies on the modified information
and takes some action on it.
– Disruption or usurpation: if the modified data controls the operation of
the system.
– Active wiretapping: altering transit data across a network
• Eg man-in-the–middle attack in which intruder reads the message from
sender and sends modified version to the recipient.

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 Repudiation
• Unlike the other type of attack, this attack can be performed
either by one of the two parties (the sender or the receiver of the
message)
• The sender/ receiver of the message might later deny that
he/she has sent/received the message.
Eg. A customer may request his bank to pay some money to some 3rd
party but later denying that he/she has made the request.
On the receiver side, when a person buys a product from manufacturer
and pays it electronically, but the manufacturer later denies having
received the payment and asks to be paid again
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 Denial of Service
• DOS or degradation of service is very common attack
• Any device has operational limit(workload)
• Workload for a device may be defined as number of simultaneous
users, size of file, the speed of data transmission and storage
capacity.
• If you exceed any of these limits, the excess load stops the system
from responding.
• The attacker make resources(servers and bandwidth) unavailable for
legitimate traffic by overwhelming with bogus/fake traffic.

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 Cont’d…
• The server crashes because of the heavy load.

• Some times the attacker intercept and deletes a server’s

response to a client, making the client to believe that the server
is not responding

• Distributed DOS: attacking a victim by many computers called

zombies(slaves which are member of botnet(a network of private computers
infected with malicious software and controlled as a group without the owners' knowledge, e.g. to send spam.))
simultaneously with large number of packets.

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Cont’d…

Smurf Attack

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 Cont’d…
 The attacker may also intercept requests from client, causing
them to send requests too many times and overload the system

 It is blocking access of legitimate users to a system/service

 DOS may occur on the source(preventing the server from

obtaining resources for its normal operation and hindering not
to respond and give service) at the destination
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 Cont’d…
 It slow down or totally interrupt the service
 This attack may have a specific target
An entity may suppress all messages directed to a particular
destination.

Disruption of an entire network, either by disabling the network or by

overloading it with messages so as to degrade performance

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 Security service
 A service that enhances the security of data processing systems
and information transfers.
 A security service makes use of one or more security
mechanisms.
 ITU-T(x.800)(International Telecommunication Union
Telecommunication Standard )defined 5 services related to the
security goal and attacks.

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 Services
Data confidentiality
Security services
Anti-change
Data integrity
Anti –Replay
Peer entity
Authentication
Data origin
Proof of Origin
Nonrepudiation
Proof of delivery

Access Control

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 Cont’d…
• Data confidentiality: The protection of data from unauthorized
disclosure.
– It is protection of transmitted data from passive attacks
• The broadest level service protects all user data transmitted between two users over a
period of time.
• The narrower form protect a single message or even specific fields within a message.
– Other aspect of confidentiality is the protection of traffic flow
from analysis.
• It requires that an attacker not be able to observe the source and destination,
frequency, length, or other characteristics of the traffic on a communications
facility.

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 Cont’d…
• Data integrity: it assurance that data received are exactly as sent by
an authorized entity (i.e., contain no modification, insertion,
deletion, or replay).
– Integrity can apply to a stream of messages, a single message, or selected
fields within a message.
– Most useful and straightforward approach is total stream protection
• A connection-oriented integrity service deals with a stream of messages,
– It assures that messages are received as sent with no duplication, insertion, modification,
reordering, or replays.
• Connectionless integrity service deals with individual messages without regard to any
larger context, generally provides protection against message modification only.

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 Cont’d…
• If a violation of integrity is detected,
– The service may simply report this violation, and some other portion
of software or human intervention is required to recover from the
violation.
– Alternatively, there are mechanisms available to recover from the loss
• Automated recovery mechanisms is, in general, the more attractive alternative.

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 Cont’d…
• Authentication: The assurance that the communicating entity
is the one that it claims to be.
– Peer Entity Authentication:
• In connection-oriented communication, it provides authentication of the sender
or receiver during connection establishment.
– Data-Origin Authentication
• In a connectionless communication, it authenticate the source of the data

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 Cont’d…
• Nonrepudiation: Provides protection against denial by one of
the entities involved in a communication.

– Proof of Origin
• Proof that the message was sent by the specified party.
– Proof of Delivery
• Proof that the message was received by the specified party.

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 Cont’d…
• Access control: The prevention of unauthorized use of a
resource.
• This service controls
– Who can have access to a resource,
– Under what conditions access can occur, and
– What those accessing the resource are allowed to do.

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 Security Mechanism
• Security Mechanism: A mechanism that is designed to detect,
prevent, or recover from a security attack.
 Security services and mechanisms are closely related. b/c a
mechanism or a set of mechanism is used to provide a service
 A wide variety of security schemes can be invented to counter
malicious attacks.
 The mechanisms are divided into
 Those that are implemented in a specific protocol layer, such as TCP or an
application-layer protocol, and
 Those that are not specific to any particular protocol layer or security
service.

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 Encipherment
• It is hiding or covering data to provide confidentiality
• Today 2 techniques are used for enciphering
– Cryptography
• One can tell that a message has been encrypted, but he cannot decode the message
without knowing the proper key.
– Steganography
• To hide the message a word or line can be shifted; whitespaces can be used, even the
number and position of the vowels are utilized to conceal the secret message.
• Ex.

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 Data integrity
• This mechanism appends a short check value that has been
created from the data itself by specific process to the data.
– The receiver receives the data and check value;
– Creates new check value from the data;
– Compares the new check value with the received one.
• If the two check values are the same, the integrity of the data
has been preserved
– Ex. MAC

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 Digital signature
It is a means by which the sender can electronically sign the
data and receiver can electronically verify the signature.
The sender with private key which is related to the public key
he/she has announced publicly sends the data.
The receiver uses the sender’s public key to prove that the
message is indeed signed by the sender who claim to have sent
the message.

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 Authentication Exchange
• In authentication exchange, two entities with some message to
prove their identity each other.
– Eg. One entity can prove that he/she knows a secret that only he/she
supposed to know

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 Traffic padding
• It means inserting some bogus data into the data traffic to
prevent the adversary’s attempt to use the traffic analysis.

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 Routing control
• It means selecting and continually changing different available
route between sender and receiver to prevent the opponent from
eavesdropping on a particular route.

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 Notarization
• It is selecting 3rd trusted party between the two parties to
control the communication.
• This can be done to prevent from repudiation.
– To prevent the sender from denying after sending request and
– To prevent the receiver from denying after receiving the data.

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 Access control
• It is method used to prove that a user has access right to data or
resources owned by a system.
• This can be proofed by using password and PIN

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Relationship between services and mechanisms
Security Services Security Mechanisms
Data confidentiality Encipherment and Routing control
Data Integrity Encipherment , Digital Signature and Data integrity
Authentication Encipherment , Digital Signature and Authentication
Exchange

Nonrepudiation Digital Signature, Data integrity and Notarization

Access Control Access control mechanism

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The end

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